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Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life
scottbomb sends in this feel-good story of an engineer-hero, calling it "one of the coolest stories I've read in a long time." "A manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program, Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast. Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — 'there was no time to take a vote' — Innes kicked into engineer mode. 'Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,' Innes explained."
I'm sure that the insurance guys will love this explanation!
In a CHiPs episode!
Seriously, well done sir. I love it when I solve problems in real time with engineering.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm still wondering why he didn't tap the "X" button to make a bigger explosion. He could have easily popped his car into the oncoming traffic and get like a 100x chain reaction bonus.
OK... I have a BIG problem with the driver not consulting the passengers while claiming "there was no time to take a vote". That is EXACTLY how dictatorships and police states are formed. He should have handed out paper ballots ("crash" or "don't crash") and then used the minivan's "On Star" service as electioneers to authorize, count and declare the vote. Then and only then should he have been allowed to do this. Hitler didn't do it either and look how that turned out. (Godwin!)
I pity the fool who wastes bandwidth whining about theoretical Slashdot users.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Guy IS a hero, though the slashdot article comes off as a little weird... "engineer mode"? I mean, (a) this isn't a special brand of engineer-only heroism; and (b) the physical principles aren't exactly so esoteric that you need an engineering background to have figured it out. Can't we just salute his bravery and quick-thinking? Or was the submitter an engineer looking for reflected glory?
I wanted to hear how he used a F22 fighter-jet to stop a truck. But he used a minivan. Boooriiinng.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is how it looks when it works. Imagine the news story had it not saved the man's life and one of his kids had been killed instead. The guy took a HUGE risk here, which is an intrinsic part of being a hero, but I pity his kids a little. Were it just me in the car, okay, maybe. But with my little ones in tow? Not a chance. I guess that's why I'm not a hero and he is, eh? At any rate, the safety of the nameless citizen won out over the safety of his own, which strikes me as odd.
Can't...see...keyboard...faulty...tear ducts...
Thats the point. He knew they would be fine because of his engineers skills. The truck is doing 40, you get in front of it and do 39, your risk is almost no existent. Once impact occurs, you can start to break. Control it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
According to TFA, he had a heart attack two days earlier and didn't know it. This restricted his circulation to the point that he ended up passing out at the wheel. There doesn't seem to be anything he could have done, except maybe go to the hospital every day just to make sure he hadn't had a heart attack recently.
And if you know your family well enough, you know what they would say. I know my wife would be mad if I wasted time asking her if it was ok. And if my dad took time to ask me I would ball him out for not acting when he needed to. People in the same family tend to think the same way.
We are the Borg...
No, it won't. One of the specs for designing brakes is that they have to easily beat the engine at full throttle.
I read this on FARK yesterday and I finally had a tiny bit of hope that maybe, if I'm in trouble, someone will be like me and just attempt to do what should be done. This morning, I go the restroom at work, and see that plastered in front of the urinals and on the backs of stall doors (for your easy reading, of course) are lists of ways you're required to respond to emergencies:
In the case of fire:
Calmly exit the building
For no reason, re-enter the building until given the OK by emergency responders
In the case of a shooting:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to stop the shooter.
In case of violence:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to intervene.
And the lists go on. I'm surrounded by warnings that if a good actions puts yourself at risk, then the action is BAD. And I weep a little...
The article says he matched speeds. With matched speeds, the impact would have been minimal. He did not use the impact to stop the other vehicle, he used his own vehicle's brakes.
Captcha: harmless
Hey, he didn't sue the guy for trauma/whiplash - it might seem obvious to us that doing so would be a nasty move, but in this day and age not suing your rescuer is probably worthy of an honourable mention.
Something very much like this happened to me back when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
I was in the car with my siblings and our mother drove to the grocery store. She parked and ran inside for just a few minutes to buy something and my younger brother started playing with the steering wheel, pretending to drive.
This car was a 1962 Chevy Bel Air and the shifter did not have an a key interlock so as he was flailing around he bumped the car into neutral and it started to roll backwards towards a busy street.
Some guy who was getting ready to pull out of the parking lot saw what was happening and drove behind us so that the car t-boned his truck instead of rolling out into the street.
where do you live? and have you ever even driven a car? the first task in engineering a vehicle is to make sure the braking system is stronger than the engine.
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
I think they should make this into a movie - here's some snappy dialogue that I have a feeling might achieve a timeless immortality in pop culture
Driver: We don't have time to discuss this in a committee"
Passenger: I am not a committee
I think you should get your brakes checked.
It'll probably just get spun as "Decisive manager shows brilliant leadership by wrecking his car without notifying his passenger."
Dew not truss your spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
BRAKES, dammit!
Free Martian Whores!
Well, "engineer mode" is a direct quote from the Seattle Times. In fact, the entire summary is a quote from the actual article. The submitter had nothing to do with the terminology.
And, really:
means he was thinking like an engineer.
It's the article that makes him sound like an engineer super-hero. And, I don't see much reason to detract from him that much.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
GODDAMMIT! It's not 'breaks' it's 'brakes'! You and all those other posters sound like fucking idiots.
A 'break' is a chance occurrence leading to good or bad luck, or it's a crack or a discontinuity of some sort. It has NOTHING to do with 'brakes', which are the mechanism used to slow a vehicle.
This is a bad as those idiots who say "mute point" instead of "moot point". Mute and moot have totally different meanings, you have to be really stupid to mix them up.
(/rant)
The driver of the truck, who had only leaned forward to scratch an itch on his ankle, was a little bit pissed about the whole affair.
Once he realized that he would have to deal with his insurance company, he faked a heart attack to get out of it. It's what we all would have done.
Ask a someone with a basic understanding of physics if two cars at a 5MPH relative velocity can collide safely, and they would say yes. But ask that same person what to do about a pickup doing 40MPH with a passed out driver, and they'd say "call 911". You need the problem solving instinct of an engineer to know calling 911 won't help, and then to trust your knowledge of physics well enough to let that pickup hit you. Even if someone did figure out they should stop the pickup themselves, they would likely do so by trying to run it off the road, or slam into it- again it takes an engineering state of mind to come up with an optimal solution that puts no one at harm, all within a few seconds. Now, an engineering degree isn't required, but you need to know enough to be able to think like one*.
*Of course, prior training works too. For example, police should know how to do what this engineer did- I recall reading a police officer did something similar to stop a "runaway Prius" (I'm not looking to start a debate over the cause of that problem).
My webcomic
Get your head around this: His passengers were his children.
However, knowing the physics, the risk to them was minimal. The only question would have been if his brakes could have held the pressure of two vehicles instead of one.
I still salute the guy. He saved a bunch of people, and did what was right. We need more people like him, and less people who want to "not get involved" because they might get hurt.
They were free to jump out when he told them what he was about to do.
It isn't about the law, it's about rational thinking. You don't know that by doing nothing the damage would have been bigger and that more would have been hurt. Yet you accept this premise as a fact and that is why your argument breaks down.
Do Nothing:
1) Driver and passengers do not impact any vehicles and get out of the way...no added risk.
2) Possible added risk to those in the intersection.
Try to stop vehicle
1) Driver and passengers are exposed to greater risk from rear impact
2) Possibly lowered but not eliminated risk to those in intersection.
Given what he knew at the time, I feel the path to least net risk and least net harm would be to get out of the way, honking and flashing lights to warn the intersection.
Blar.
Guy IS a hero, though the slashdot article comes off as a little weird... "engineer mode"? I mean, (a) this isn't a special brand of engineer-only heroism; and (b) the physical principles aren't exactly so esoteric that you need an engineering background to have figured it out. Can't we just salute his bravery and quick-thinking? Or was the submitter an engineer looking for reflected glory?
Cynic mode ENGAGE:
The newspapers love to report on things that might positively affect the stock prices of certain companies in people's stock portfolios. Especially ones that might be titled "Seattle Times"
True fact: I once was a finalist in some local paper airplane contest done as an art project />
Newspaper headlines: "Boeing Engineer Wins Paper Airplane Contest" <rolls eyes
... then they would wrestle, with the minivan careening crazily all over the road as they roll around and dangled off the back... pulling themselves up just in time as the pickup truck repeatedly bumped the back of the van, and then having a fistfight on the roof of the minivan, which would then plunge off a giant cliff in slow motion, with the (driver or passenger, whoever's the good guy) grabbing onto a tree on the edge of the cliff and saving himself with one hand while he snatched the unconscious pickup-truck driver to safety with other (as the pickup truck too plunged into the void). Then the pickup-truck driver would wake up and ask woozily what on earth he was doing dangling off this cliff and the hero would answer "just hanging around" (with an austrian accent).
I'd watch it...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
When I was a small kid, I was left by myself in the back seat of the car (back then, no one used seatbelts around here, specially in the back seat). For unknown reasons the car lost its brakes and started moving downhill and would exit through the front gate and likely hit the other house across the street. I was able to steer the car so that it crashed the gate instead of going out of our property.
;-)
I don't have clear memories of this as I was small. When my grandmother told this story there was one remarkably funny part.
She told me when people said stuff like: "It was god who turned that wheel and avoided a tragedy!" I promptly replied: "No, it wasn't god, it was me! I did like this!" and did a swinging motion similar to turning the driving wheel.
I wish I remembered this last bit. I could then tell everyone I was an atheist even as a kid.
lol nice risk analysis you got going there.
"Given what he knew at the time,"
You have no idea what he knew at the time, so don't even try to postulate.
Oh - and never mind that the *facts* of the incident prove you wrong. The "least net harm" was proven to be him stopping the vehicle.
lol
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Passenger 2: I have a bad feeling about this
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Please never get a job that involves risk analysis or other people's safety.
You're very bad at it.
So what if they were his children? I don't give my parents the implicit right to risk my life in an attempt to save someone else.
There are MANY other questions. He didn't know why the driver was slumped, perhaps he was asleep or passed out. What if the driver awoke when he impacted? What might he do? Engine power is nearly always enough to over-come braking power. The slumped driver might panic, hit the gas and then both vehicles are pushed into the intersection. What if the bumping caused the driver to fall to the side, turning the wheel and sending his car into pedestrian traffic?
It's not about not getting involved because "might get hurt" it's about the reasonable and most responsible action given known information.
Blar.
Given what he knew at the time, I feel the path to least net risk and least net harm would be to get out of the way, honking and flashing lights to warn the intersection.
What about the intersection after that? And the intersection after *that*, ad infinitum.
If the driver of the other vehicle was slumped over the wheel, sooner or later, he was going to hit *something*. What the engineer did was logical, rational, and yes, heroic.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?